Romantic Rewritings of Respair in Young Adult Sexual Assault Narrative Fan Fiction

• In Event: Reading Dangerously: Responding to Texts in These Times

Abstract

Popova elegantly captures what fanfiction creators do: “We rewrite endings. We resurrect the dead. We give life to minor and marginalized characters. We imagine ourselves in the magical worlds we are passionate about” (5). With this in mind, this paper analyzes fanfiction written in response to two young adult (YA) sexual assault narratives: Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak and Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why. Under examination are the ways in which creators genre-translate these rape trauma stories into tales of romance, offering a kind respair that the victim-survivor characters were not originally afforded, including but not limited to: respectful relationships built on friend/ally/ship, familial support, desire and love, and sometimes consensual sexual pleasure.

Author

• Amber Moore, Simon Fraser University
  Presenting Author